An hour after the aforementioned conversation, I started off to visit my mother, taking with me what remained of the money I had earned by giving lessons. When I now saw her again — she was terrified when I burst into the house so suddenly — I immediately perceived that she looked ill and aged. During the few months since I was last there her hair had turned gray. That frightened me. For the first time I saw on the person who was nearest to me in the world the signs of remorseless old age. And because I was still young, old age meant to me nothing less than death. Yes, death had already smoothed my mother’s hair with his fearful hands, making it faded and silvery. So she would soon die, I thought, genuinely upset. And the guilt for that, I went on to think, lies on the shoulders of Prince Krapotkin. For, naturally enough, I was anxious to make out the Prince to be even guiltier than he already was in my eyes. The guiltier he was, the more righteous and justified appeared my project.
So I told my mother that I had only come for a few hours to tell her of a most remarkable and secret affair. The next day I was to go to Odessa. Nothing less had happened than that the Prince had summoned me to him. The news had been brought to me yesterday by an emissary of the Prince’s who had called at my landlord’s. She, my mother, was the only person to whom I had told a word of this. So she would please say nothing about it, I insisted stupidly and importantly. I made it apparent that the Prince was possibly ill and on the point of death.
But I had scarcely made this deceitful suggestion than my mother, who had been listening calmly, sitting on the wooden threshold of the house, sprang up. Blood rushed to her cheeks, tears welled out of her eyes; first she flung her arms out and then she clasped her hands together. I saw that I had frightened her, began to realize what she would say next, and myself fell into a cold terror. “Then I must go with you!” she said. “Come, quickly, quickly, he must not die, he must not die, I must see him, I must see him!” So great, so noble, I would like to say, was the love of this simple woman who was my mother. Many years had passed since she had felt the last kiss of her lover, but on her cheek she could feel the kiss as vividly as if it had been given only yesterday. Death itself had already touched her, but not even the touch of death could deaden or obliterate the touch of her lover. “Did he write to you?” asked my mother. “Be calm,” I said. And since my mother could neither read nor write, I played an even more shameful deception upon her. “He wrote me a few lines in his own hand, so he cannot be very ill,” I said.
In a moment she grew calm. She kissed me. And I was not ashamed to accept her kiss. She gave me twenty rubles, a fairly heavy little pile of silver wrapped up in a blue handkerchief. I hid it under my shirt above my belt.
Then I started out for Odessa.
Yes, my friends, I went to Odessa. I had a clear conscience, I felt no regret, I had my goal before my eyes and nothing should keep me from it. It was a brilliant spring day when I arrived. For the first time in my life, I saw a great city. It was no ordinary Russian city. Firstly it was a harbor; and secondly, most of the streets and parks were, as I had already heard, laid out in completely European style. Perhaps Odessa was not to be compared with Petersburg — that Petersburg which I carried in my imagination. But Odessa, too, was a great, an enormous city. It lay on the sea. It had a harbor. And it was the first town to which I had traveled quite alone, on my own initiative, the first wonderful stage on my wonderful journey “to the top.”
As I left the station, I felt for the money under my shirt. It was still there. I took a room in a little hotel near the harbor. In my opinion, it was essential to live as near as possible to the Prince. Since, as I had heard, he lived in a house “on the sea,” I imagined that it must be somewhere in the neighborhood of the harbor. I never doubted for a moment that the Prince, as soon as he learned of my arrival, would press me to come and live with him. And from there I would not have far to go. I burned with curiosity to discover the whereabouts of his mysterious house. I assumed that everyone in Odessa would know where the Prince lived. But I did not dare ask the owner of my hotel. It was fear that prevented me from making such an open enquiry, and also a sort of stupid pompousness. For already I saw myself as a Prince Krapotkin, and I was subtly amused at the idea that I was staying at a far too cheap hotel, incognito, under the ridiculous name of Golubchik. So I decided that I would rather get the desired information from the nearest policeman.
But first I went down to the harbor. I wandered slowly through the crowded streets, pausing at every shop window especially before those displaying bicycles or knives, and made various plans for future purchases. Tomorrow, or the day after, I would be able to buy anything that pleased me, even a new suit of school clothes. Thus I continued until I reached the harbor. The sea was deep blue, a hundred times bluer than the sky and also more beautiful because one could touch it with one’s hands. And like the intangible clouds that sailed across the heavens, there were tangible ships, also white, large and small, sailing in and out of the harbor. A great, an indescribable, enchantment filled my heart, and for an hour I even forgot the Prince. There were a number of boats in the harbor, swinging gently at anchor, and when I came near to them I could hear the tender tireless lapping of the blue water against the soft white wood and hard black iron. I saw the cranes, soaring through the air like great iron birds and vomiting their loads out of their brown-black jaws into the waiting boats. Each of you, my friends, knows what it is to catch sight of the sea and a busy harbor for the first time in one’s life. But I will not weary you with long descriptions.
After a time I felt the pangs of hunger and went into a confectioner’s. I had reached that age at which hunger drives one, not into a restaurant, but into a confectioner’s shop. I ate my fill. I believe that my voracious appetite created quite a sensation. I devoured one iced cake after another, for I had money enough, in my purse, and drank two cups of heavily sugared chocolate. Just as I was about to leave, a man suddenly stepped over to my table and said something to me which I did not immediately catch. I believe I was very frightened at first. Only when the man went on speaking did I slowly begin to comprehend. Indeed, he spoke with a foreign accent. I saw immediately that he was not a Russian, and this fact alone banished my first feeling of fear and woke in me a kind of pride. I don’t really know why. But it seems to me that we Russians often feel flattered when we are given the opportunity of meeting foreigners. And by “foreigners” we understand Europeans, those people who are supposed to have so much more intelligence than we, although they are of far less worth. It sometimes seems to us that God has favored the Europeans, although they do not believe in Him. But perhaps they do not believe in Him simply because He has given them so much. And so they become presumptuous and believe that they made the world themselves, and after all that they’re dissatisfied with it, although, according to their idea, they’re the ones who are responsible. Think for a moment — I thought to myself, as I watched the stranger — there must be something very special about you if a European comes and talks to you casually like that. He is much older, perhaps ten years older than you. So we’ll be polite to him. We’ll show him that we’re an educated Russian from the high school and no ordinary peasant.…